WASHINGTON – The deteriorating human rights situation in the US cannot befully assigned to the policies of incumbent President Donald Trump, as heinherited a number of issues from previous administrations, senior directorfor research at the Amnesty International human rights watchdog, toldSputnik.
“What is happening in the United States now has not been there for manyyears, not under Democratic, not under Republican presidents. But partof the problem, in particular Guantanamo, was not invented by Trump,” AnnaNeistat, senior director for research at the Amnesty International humanrights watchdog said, referring to a detention camp established by then USPresident George W. Bush’s administration in 2002.
Earlier in the day, Amnesty International released its annual reportlink>in thelead-up to the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of HumanRights in December 2018. The report indicates that the human rightssituation in the United States has deteriorated since Trump took officein January 2017. In particular, the report accuses Trump of “hate-filledrhetoric” and condemns his administration’s immigration policies that barpeople of certain countries from seeking asylum in the United States andthreats to increase detainees at Guantanamo Baylink>.
Trump’s presidency did worsen problems like violence in prisons and theillegal use of weapons by the police but has not been the root cause,Neistat stressed.
“We see that [Trump] is not ready to take any steps to solve this[Guantanamo] problem… or the problem of violence in prisons, the problemwith police using weapons — in many cases illegally. All these problemsthat his presidency has aggravated, but did not introduce.
Neistat stated that Amnesty International was conducting a major projectin the United States dedicated to gun violence. One of the main issuessurrounding this problem, according to the watchdog, lies between theinternationally recognized right to life and the right to bear arms that iscemented in the US Constitution.
“We do not compare the right to carry arms with the right to life,but nevertheless, we have to remember that the right to carry arms isspecifically American, it is anchored in the Constitution and is notrelated to international human rights. The right to life is protectedby the international system of human rights, part of which is the UnitedStates. So, we do not talk about actions made by individuals, we talkabout state system, which allows these actions to take lives of otherpeople,” Neistat said.
The Amnesty International report, released on Friday, also slammed theTrump administration’s bid to construct a wall along the US-Mexico border;and decisions to end several programs for immigrants, such as the CentralAmerican Minors program that allowed children from El Salvador, Guatemalaand Honduras to request refugee status, and the Deferred Actionfor Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which protects young undocumentedimmigrants from deportation.